Williams 2012 - FW34 Renault

So with just one race to go and testing of Valtteri Bottas in Abu Dhabi focus should now be shifting to 2012. One thing is for sure, after the worst season in the teams’ history things need to improve for next year

FW33 problemsAdam Parr has recently stated that they know what the problems are with the FW33 and that they can be solved over the winter i.e. they should not appear on the FW34. It is easy to come out with such comments but I just hope he is right. A new design team will hopefully come up with something a lot better than the FW33

EngineRenault is coming back to Williams after a break of 14 years. It will be interesting to see what affect this has but using the same engine as the fastest car on the grid (at least in 2011) will give not only a good reference point but also no place to hide on car performance.

SponsorsA lot of talk about QLB joining, but this may be dependent on the driver choice. The car has looked bare this year and the team badly need some investment,so hopefully rumours of this happening are true.

DriversMaldonado - It would seem at the time of writing that Pastor Maldonado is safe in his seat, not just due to his sponsorship but that he hasn’t been far away from Rubens all year. Needs to improve in certain areas (consistency, amount of penalties), so if he is retained he needs to step up a level next year.

Rubens – not looking good for him at the moment, Brazil could be his last race for Williams. Would be a shame to have gone out with such a poor car

Kimi – Rumours of him coming back are rife, remains to be seen if a deal can/will be struck

Outsiders – Sutil or maybe Bottas depending on what happens with the other drivers

Hopefully they will be good. Mike's last Mclaren was terribly beautiful. Aero, fuel loads, tyres and so on all changed since then, but mechanical bits can be done well.
Cossy was a good power plant, but not s good as Renault I might well assume, having said that, Williams KERS that might going into Renault Unit may or may not a performance differentiator.
If it will be beter than 33? I bet yes. By how much, that is the question. Should be hard to make it worse.

Aero Engineer 1: "How are the figures on the FW33?"Aero Engineer 2: "Terrible, take a look at the print-out."Aero Engineer 1: "Bloody Hell! Pass me the phone..."

Designer: "Hello, Design Office."Aero Engineer 1: "I've just seen the wind tunnel figures for next years car. Are you sitting down?"Designer: "Wow, is it that good?"Aero Engineer: "Umm, not exactly. In fact, as an aerodynamics efficiency reference benchmark, we're slightly behind the Statue of Liberty."Designer: "What? Are you sure?"Aero Engineer 1: "Afraid so. According to the wind tunnel, the front wing doesn't work, the underbody doesn't work, the rear wing doesn't work."Designer: "You're exaggerating, aren't you?"Aero Engineer 1: "Not really. If anything I'm being generous. When I say the front wing doesn't work, I mean it's generating lift instead of downforce."Designer: "B*gg*er!"Aero Engineer 1: "The tray isn't so much channeling the airflow as acting as a Brownian motion generator."Designer: "B*gg*r!"Aero Engineer 1: "The rear wing would be more suited attached to the mast of a racing yacht."Designer: "B*gg*r! I don't think I want to hear about the diffuser."Aero Engineer: "Diffuser? That's a diffuser?"Designer: "B*gg*r! Looks like it's back to the drawing board. I wonder if we could angle the gearbox? Then there wouldn't be any bodywork at all..."Aero Engineer 1: "Do you want your wind tunnel model back?"Designer: "**** no! Bin it! Burn it! Get rid of it, just don't let Patrick see it!"Aero Engineer 1: "OK. Bye."

Aero Engineer 2: "I'll go chuck this model in a skip..."Aero Engineer 1: "Hang on! That's the wind tunnel model!"Aero Engineer 2: "Yeah. You want rid of it don't you?"Aero Engineer 1: "But it's supposed to be in the tunnel! What are these figures from if not from the model?"

I'm sure I've read something on the autosport site where the FW33 back end is discussed. They admire how small Williams have made the gearbox/suspension but then find it strange that the exhaust is so badly positioned.

I'm sure I've read something on the autosport site where the FW33 back end is discussed. They admire how small Williams have made the gearbox/suspension but then find it strange that the exhaust is so badly positioned.

I assume carrying the small gearbox design over to the FW34 would be a good thing considering packaging and low COG.

Although the rear wing seemed to be moving about a lot in pre-season testing on the FW33 it seems to have been fixed

Rubens – not looking good for him at the moment, Brazil could be his last race for Williams. Would be a shame to have gone out with such a poor car

Not really, how many good cars has this man had in his career, he's had so many cars that have just been dominant over the season. Apart from Schumacher he's probably had the most out of all the drivers on the grid.

I'm sure I've read something on the autosport site where the FW33 back end is discussed. They admire how small Williams have made the gearbox/suspension but then find it strange that the exhaust is so badly positioned.

Williams has never got to grips with the whole blown diffuser thing and have lost alot of talent from their aero department in recent years (mainly to McLaren). 2012 should be better with reduced aero dependency and no blown diffusers. I cant help thinking that if Pastor had finished fourth in Monaco like he should have done then the team would have grown in confidence and morale and done better in subsequent races. They will bounce back especially if the Kimi deal is done. Otherwise I would go for Bottas/Sutil. Renault is also a step in the right direction.

History states clearly Williams and Head's attitudes towards drivers and staff and old age certainly brings about stubbornness and contakerous'es'ism's(!).

I think Kimi is going to have huge personality conflict there from day 1.

As for the FW34, since they had the Cosworth Williams were clearly out front of the other Cosworth runners and I thought the switch to Renault would see them at least battling with Benz but recently they have simply gone backwards something shocking and now it's very fuzzy.

I think Kimi is going to have huge personality conflict there from day 1.

That is the key to whether he goes there or not and why it has been dragging on so long. Perhaps both sides are getting worried about how the relationship will go. Adrian Sutil with something to prove would be my choice. He has funds too. Frank should offer it to him now so he can stick two fingers up to Vijay!

History states clearly Williams and Head's attitudes towards drivers and staff and old age certainly brings about stubbornness and contakerous'es'ism's(!).

That really doesn't apply anymore. It only really happened at it's peak in the mid-90s when they thought they could do what they wanted with drivers as they saw themselves as invincible. They were in effect, spoilt. With their pay driver in Maldonado, I'm fairly sure they know their place now.

I think Kimi is going to have huge personality conflict there from day 1.

One of Williams recent issues has seemed to have been throwing things on the car without really thinking it through. They seem to constantly be assessing useless updates.

They have usually been one of the first teams to test new rules but it never pans out - hopefully Coughlan and co bring with them a more systematic approach.

Recently the FW33 has shown some improvement without major upgrades, which shows some improvement in this department.Under Sam Michael the team just threw a bunch of upgrades, which never worked, on the problems and hoped for the best.

I am positive for next season, simply because it can't really be any worse!

I think quite a lot depends on the team integrating the Renault engine as well as possible. I don't know if they already have all the data needed to do so, but mating it to the KERS system and getting the cooling requirements just right is going to be a really tough job. They must have already decided what kind of layout and aero solution they want to run, so hopefully the Renault fits this!

If he's technically skillful and fast (because if he's not good on the technical area then I don't know who's going to setup the car) and has money then bring in on. But I would prefer that he's given Fridays running to then be on the race seat for 2013.

I am positive for next season, simply because it can't really be any worse!

I think quite a lot depends on the team integrating the Renault engine as well as possible. I don't know if they already have all the data needed to do so, but mating it to the KERS system and getting the cooling requirements just right is going to be a really tough job. They must have already decided what kind of layout and aero solution they want to run, so hopefully the Renault fits this!

The Renault is suppoused to be quite light in terms of cooling requirements, i remember something comparing the cooling holes on the STR to the RBR back when they ran similar chassis and the STR had lots of extra cooling holes.

The current RB7 sidepods are also setting the standards on how tiny those things can be.

Venezuelan Congressman Carlos Ramos is beginning to delve into details about the PDVSA sponsorship of the WilliamsF1 team. According to Ramos, no-one in Venezuela – apart from a handful of Chaves supporters – know the details of the sponsorship: what has been paid and promised the team. According to Venezuelan law, no public money can be committed to such projects without the approval of the Venezuelan Congress. Neither Hugo Chavez, nor PDVSA, can unilaterally spend public monies without government approval. Ramos says that the contract between PDVSA and Williams F1 team might be illegal, as he can find no record of the contract having ever been discussed, or approved, by Congress.

Ramos says that the reports in Venezuela have suggested that the deal could be worth as much as $225 million over the full term, depending on the success of the team.

Williams as a team have lost thier way and I do not see anyway they will come back. The last good move Sir Frank made was when he took on JPM only to lose him. No matter what Williams does it will not make much difference. Williams just can not seem to get it's self out of a hole. Bad design, no money, bad driver choise and a raft of other problems. Williams was a winner once in a grand scale but it seems anymore Williams has had more failures and sucsess. Just think about that lamo mistakes Williams has made; Masell, Hill, Newey, losing sponsors and they keep coming. I think the biggest mistake was Newey. They should have keep him no matter what the cost. Even if it was a buy in of the team. Williams would have had the winning Mclaren and Red Bull cars. I think it is just a matter of time before they fade away or get bought up by maybe Volkswagan or someone else.

And I too hope Rubens stays on but at the moment it would seem that he is behind at least Kimi and Sutil in the pecking order.

Yeah... my feeling is that it would be almost criminal if Williams doesn't re-sign Rubens for 2012, having provided him the worst car in the team's history this year. You can't fault his lack of points this year when the car has been a disaster.

Think about what happened when Rubens was signed by Williams in 2009. He was on the "second wind" of his career, having a great season at Brawn. As he was in the process of making a late WDC challenge, Williams signed Rubens during the Spa 2009 weekend (I believe). At that time, the FW31 was not a bad car... Nico Rosberg was regularly qualifying in the Top 10 and scoring points. So I'm sure Rubens thought that Williams was on an upswing. In fact, I think he said exactly that during the BBC F1 Forum after Abu Dhabi 2009.

Come to find out later that Rubens was approached by McLaren towards the end of the '09 season, and asked about potentially driving there in 2010, but Rubens was already contracted with Williams. Can you imagine how things would be different right now? Rubens would be in a McLaren, next to Lewis, Jenson would still be at Mercedes, and Schumacher probably wouldn't have come out of retirement.

Rubens would probably have won a few times at McLaren, and we probably wouldn't be talking about retirement right now.

Well Petrov seems to be doing his best to talk himself out of the Renault drive for next year, this may have an effect on potential drivers for Williams. If they do get shot of him I would think Sutil and Kimi would be interesting replacements for Renault, a team who, like Williams are looking for drivers to bring some cash with them (Kimi via QNB if that is to be believed)

The BBC made a good point during the last race by saying that if the team do mean to sign a new driver, then they should make it public before the next race, so Rubens can get the sign off he deserves. However, I don't believe they will, as I believe nothing is concluded yet.

The BBC made a good point during the last race by saying that if the team do mean to sign a new driver, then they should make it public before the next race, so Rubens can get the sign off he deserves. However, I don't believe they will, as I believe nothing is concluded yet.

I wouldn't mind the same driver pairing as this year.

I agree although that said it's starting to look like Rubens has a chance of driving for Enstone.